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by Willie Waffle

The Heartbreak Kid

Ben Stiller stars as Eddie – a San Francisco sporting goods shop owner who is down on his luck when it comes to the ladies.  On Valentine’s Day, he ends up meeting Lila (Malin Ackerman), which leads to a whirlwind romance and marriage.  As they head off for the honeymoon, Eddie starts to see a different, more frightening, more psychotic side of Lila, and meets a new woman at the resort, Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who might be a better match. 

Will Eddie end up with Miranda?  Will Lila become normal again?  Is Eddie just blowing it all out of proportion?

The Heartbreak Kid is an average comedy with moments of hilarity, but more moments of blah.  Co-writers/directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly revived the gross out humor that has become more commonplace in comedies over the last 10 years, but The Heartbreak Kid shows they have been surpassed by the next generation of outrageous comedy auteurs, led by Judd Apatow, who has added some heart and soul to the craziness in ways the Farrellys want to in this movie, but fall short in doing so. 

You can feel the Farrellys and the other co-writers (Scot Armstrong, Leslie Dixon and Kevin Barnett, based on the screenplay by Neil Simon, who I’m sure never intended to include bestiality in the final product like we have here) struggling to give Eddie some justifiable reasons for dumping his newlywed bride, and attempting to light a spark between the groom and this new Miranda girl, but it was hard to find something resembling chemistry and excitement in that part of the story, and it’s even harder to care for Eddie’s plight because he’s being duplicitous with his new wife, and the woman he supposedly cares about.   Because of these failures, the audience is supposed to take most plot twists for granted because the writers want them to happen in the story, rather than make us feel it in our hearts and brains.  It's too hard to root for a guy who is acting this way, especially a fortysomething with gray hair who should know better.     

Worst of all, The Heartbreak Kid feels like a 90-minute movie stretched out to 2 hours for no good reason.  The Farrellys take much too long with every aspect of the movie from the original courtship between Lila and Eddie to all of the troubles that pop up on the honeymoon to the rambling developing love between Miranda and Eddie, which isn’t very compelling.  Carlos Mencia shows up in a meaningless role that could have been one good funny cameo, instead of several scenes that are hit and miss, while Jerry Stiller kind of feels out of place and a bit forced as the foulmouthed, wild man father.    

The audience gets some very funny shocking bits, but they are few and far between.  For most of the film, you feel like everyone is kind of going through the motions trying to find what would be shocking, and completely miscalculating what would be sweet.  Stick around through the credits for a couple additional scenes, but these just ruin the good last scene which would have left the audience walking out of the theater with a better laugh.   

1 ½ Waffles (Out of 4)

The Heartbreak Kid 
is rated R for strong sexual content, crude humor, language and nudity

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